So I have played the game for 24,7 hours according to Steam and have reached level 21. Some of the playtime has been from the game being logged in but not playing, but I definitely have at least 20 hours of actual playtime and likely more. I took notes almost from the start and all throughout the last hour, so this feedback is both from a new player perspective and a sort of experienced player perspective. I played most of my playthrough with a dex build with dual daggers on light equip load, played with a controller. Some of the feedback is bugs, others are balance and gameplay suggestions. Most of it is personal opinion, but I’ve seen some of the sentiments from others as well.
To start off, I absolutely adore this game, its story and its characters already, so everything is said with love. The feedback is written here as I cronologically wrote it down, so I thought it was a bit fun to see what I thought as I went along. Some of these thing may already be actively worked on, but still warrants a mention.
- Ingredients and materials should have their own seperate tabs. (Not so bad later when you have full inventory slots and personal chests, but for a very long time, inventory management was atrocious).
- When pressing back on vendors, it should exit to the previous menu, not all the way out. Maybe just drop the first menu selction window altogether and go straight to the tabs.
- When looking at items/runes etc, give us a detailed description option describing what runes and other things do.
- After enchanting/infusion/crafting etc. show a summary of the result
- When holding up or down to select consumables, show what the item does. Also, selecting items like this is akward during fights. Explore different control schemes.
- Loot in front of chests prevent you from opening them. (killed a crab in front of a chest. Its loot got in the way).
- Bounties should be more clear → How many? How many left? I did notice the small progress ring when the quest update pop-up appears, but show us in menus and more clearly.
- Game needs some kind of estus flask in my opinion. Just a basic one with 3-5 uses that heals 25-30% health. It may influence your interacting with the healing crafting, so I don’t know the right solution. I just know it feels really bad to run out of healing when stuck on a boss.
- All healing recipes shouldn’t use the same basic herb. For example all tier one healing uses artemisia herb. So you never have enough, cause it’s also quite rare at the same time. Diversify a bit.
- There’s sort of a disconnect between equipment description and stats. For example, I had a piece of armor which said it was light and favored movement, but the armor was very heavy. Weight catagories should probably be looked at and retuned a bit. Also a pair of dual daggers require dex AND strength. Why?
- Durability needs to go. I will say after the hotfix it felt much better to where I’m not really noticing it. But then why is it even a thing? It definitely shouldn’t be a death penalty. It ruins the joy of trying to perfect and learn a boss or just being stuck on a boss entirely. Figure out some other death penalty. Maybe lose some of your experience that you can then pick up again where you died. Yes I know this copies Souls, but it just works, and the game is already a soulslike.
- We need some sort of crit attack or counter/finisher on parrying. Parrying feels good, but enemies recover crazy fast so you only have time for a normal attack anyway. At least make that attack deal extra damage at the very least.
- Can’t sort chests. Give us and option to do so.
- Animation bug when digging with Iron Shovel
- More info on recipes when buying. What type of item is it? Mace, dagger, axe? Don’t know. How much does the thing heal? Don’t know. What ingredients/materials does it use? Don’t know. Give us more info.
- Display upgrade level of vendor when browsing at the vendor. Up the corner or something.
- When hovering over materials show how many we already own. Both in inventory and our personal stash and chests. Maybe even be able to extract from chests when handing in items for challenges, building projects or when crafting in the town.
- You should heal to full when you go back to town.
- Have a training dummy. It seems the upper party of the town already has an area ready for this.
- When selecting the last whisper when you teleport, show os the name of the location.
- Challenges where you collect items shouldn’t actually consume them. The challenge was to collect it, not turn it in. Otherwise make the challenge say “Deliver 10 wood”. In my opinion though, it feels bad to just to have to hand in the materials you just collected. You spend money on the tools you used collecting them, but gain mony from the challenge. Sort of cancel eachother out. I know you get a bit of exp, but still. Feels weird and bad.
- Give us controller icons for the Playstation DualSense.
- Cooldown of food is waaaay to long. It should be at least halfed. Maybe even removed altogther in my opinion.
- Show location names on map and whan hovering over sections. Also have a button that goes straight to the map.
- Focus Regeneration stat is not working. Or at least is so extremly slow that’s is actually unnoticable.
- No clay on higher world state difficulty. Clay disappears from loot pool. Such an oversight when building uses clay. (seems to be hotfixed)
- Negative stats on purple gear feels a bit too harsh in my opinion. Half focus points? What?! Lose experience on death? What?! Never ever using that shit. It actually feels bad to roll purple gear. I get that it’s cursed but maybe tone it down just a little bit.
- Have a lot more different stats to roll on gear. Right now very little variation. This is probably already planned I would imagine.
- Give us item comparision when vendoring a browsing items. This is a big one I feel.
- Have item bonuses reflect on items and stats. For example if I have 40% healing effectiveness from gear, and I have a food item healing 100, have it say 140 now, so I know it’s working. Also, does healing effectiveness work on passive health regen? We don’t know. Give us more info so we can make informed decisions!!
- Shield bearing enemies. Just… man… It hit their shield, I stagger. I hit their back, I stagger. I parry them and hit them while they are staggered, I still stagger? WTF?! Rebalance this please.
- No elemental effect on enemies? A bit disappointing. The first item I crafted had bonus Plague damage. Nice I thought. I’ll be a poisoning assassin. Nope. Just extra purple damage numbers. Have the different damage type have some sort of extra utility. I know there are probably weaknesses on enemies. But still. EDIT: (I’ve seen several comments as to this already being in the game. Haven’t seen it myself though. I’ve seen visual effects on the enemy but no actual damage. I’ll look around for footage and proof).
- Some lvl 21 items have weirdly high stat requirements. Like 42 dex on a spear. Why? Just seems a bit off I think. At level 21 I’m not even close to being able to use that since, obviously, I’ve leveled other things than dex.
- Daily challenges should be more generalized. Don’t make me kill enemies with a spear when my character is a dagger wielding rogue. Don’t make me use a bow if I’m an unga bunga strength user. I get that it’s to encourage trying new things. But there’s no respeccing for now. And why would I respec just for a simple challenge?
- Enchanting needs to be deeper and more transparent. Have more influence in the outcome maybe? Like if you use a certain extra material, you get higher chance for a blue or purple item etc. Or maybe even a small chance for orange with a certain material being used when enchanting. You get the idea. I actually like the enchanting system, I just really want to interact with it more!